


Ties

by celeste9



Category: Primeval
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Related, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 16:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An innocent question prompts Jess and Lester to have a revelation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ties

**Author's Note:**

> For Primeval Denial bingo, 'what do you mean, we're related?' Beta by fredbassett.

“I always wondered,” Emily said, leaning in to peer at the photograph clipped to Jess’ station. “Who are they?”

“My parents,” Jess answered, only half paying attention.

“Oh,” Emily said, in a quick, startled exhalation. “I wouldn’t have…” She fell silent and Jess laughed.

“You wouldn’t have thought I’d have a black mother?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“I’m adopted. My birth parents died in a car crash when I was three.”

“What did you say?”

Jess turned, blinking, towards Lester. She hadn’t even realised he was nearby. “I’m adopted?”

“No, after that.”

“My parents died in a car crash when I was three,” she repeated. “I was in the car as well but apparently I wasn’t even hurt beyond a bruise or two. The doctors said it was a miracle.” Or so Jess had been told. She didn’t exactly remember it.

Lester was simply standing there, gaping at her as though she’d sprouted wings. He looked as thrown as Jess had ever seen him. Then he shook himself and said, “Sorry, I’m… Please excuse me.” He hurried away, heading for his office.

“Well, that was bizarre,” Jess said, exchanging a glance with Emily.

-

Jess raised a hand to tap softly at Lester’s door. She could see him through the glass, sitting behind his desk and staring intently at something in front of him. When he made no move to invite Jess in, she took it upon herself to enter anyway. He hadn’t sent her away, after all.

“Lester?” she asked, drawing closer. “Is something the matter?”

He finally looked at her, his eyes focusing on her face. “Jessica,” he said, which was strange because he never called her that. He stood up, swiping something off the desk as he went. “I want to show you something,” he said, coming to a pause in front of Jess and handing her what she now could see was a picture, the size that could be kept in a wallet.

It was a photograph of Lester, much younger than he was now, likely not much older than Jess was herself. He was wearing a tuxedo and standing with a beaming couple in what must be a wedding photo. That wasn’t odd.

What was odd was that the beaming couple matched the photo Jess kept with her always. The photo of her birth parents.

Jess’ hand shook as she gripped the picture. “I…” She swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

Very gently, Lester took Jess’ hand to pry the photo away from her. He handed her a second one. Here again was a still quite young Lester, wearing a cardigan with the sleeves pushed up and holding a baby. He was smiling at it, looking at ease and very much like he held babies all the time. There was something like awe in his face, as though he couldn’t quite believe the little baby was real, or that he loved it so much.

Raising her eyes to Lester’s face, Jess saw that he was watching her with what might have been nervous apprehension and perhaps even a bit of fear. “The baby is me, isn’t it?”

Lester nodded. “I believe so.”

Jess looked back down at the photograph. “I… I never noticed before. How much you resemble the picture of my biological father.” But he did, the narrowness of his face and his dark hair.

“He was my brother,” Lester said, sounding as though he might choke.

“I suppose, um… I suppose that means we’re related.” It was absolutely the most inane thing Jess could ever have said but she couldn’t think of anything else.

Lester was hovering, poised on his toes like he either might flee or spring forward to clutch at Jess, if he could only decide what was right. “You have her eyes.”

“And his nose,” Jess said quietly, remembering all the long nights as a girl when she’d stared at her parents’ photograph, trying to make them real, trying to see herself in them.

“Yes.”

“So… What happens now?”

Lester was so utterly, uncomfortably at a loss that it pained even Jess. Eventually he said, his cheeks lightly flushing, “Your wardrobe is entirely inappropriate and you should invest in skirts that consist of more than a wisp of fabric.”

And then, though it was his own office, Lester left Jess standing in it by herself.

“Okay,” Jess said, thinking about how sad it was that she couldn’t even say this was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to her since she’d arrived at the ARC.

-

The following day, Jess carefully selected a dress with a loose, flowing skirt that fell to her knees. Her skirts weren’t _that_ short, but she supposed it was only fair to make an effort. She had spent half the night desperately praying that she had never, er, admired Lester, so to say, and she expected he had done much the same.

Which she was never going to think about again, never ever ever. Ever.

She found Lester hiding in the break room, though surely he would never admit that was what he was doing. He gazed at her with wide eyes, eyes that now looked so similar to her father’s that she wondered how she had never noticed.

“Lester,” Jess said, because he was still Lester, no matter what else he might be. “Here’s the thing. My birth parents died and I don’t remember them. I never met any of their family; I didn’t even know if they had anyone still living. I thought they mustn’t, or else they just never wanted to meet me.”

Lester’s face was contorting in a grimace but Jess waved him silent.

“Hear me out, okay? All I mean is, I never knew anyone who was my blood. It didn’t matter too much, because I had my parents, the ones who raised me, and they loved me, they love me so much. But I’d be lying if I said I never longed for my old family. And now here you are, and I’m going to hug you, and you can’t stop me so don’t bother trying.”

Before Lester could even do as much as get a word in, Jess closed the distance between them and circled her arms around Lester. He was still and stiff but Jess pressed her face against him and squeezed her arms around his back, breathing in and in, so deep, like he might disappear. She felt him shudder and then his arms came around her and he was smoothing her hair.

“Jess,” he said. “Jess, you have to know, I wanted to keep you, I wanted you to come and live with me because I loved you like you were mine. But my wife-- my ex-wife, she wouldn’t hear of it, we had our own baby on the way, and she’d been an only child, you see, she didn’t understand, and that… Well, I suppose in a way you could say that was the beginning of the end.” He chuckled dryly, without amusement. “But it was never because you weren’t loved. Never.”

“All right,” Jess said, her voice muffled because she was pressing too hard into the front of Lester’s shoulder. She thought she might cry and she couldn’t work out how much of her emotions were because she’d found her family and how much was because it was _Lester._ Lester who had become much, much more than simply her boss somewhere around the time when they’d almost died together.

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” Lester said, sounding as though he were desperate for Jess to understand.

Jess finally pulled back, giving Lester some space to get himself back under control, to right his clothing and pretend like he hadn’t just been overly emotional. “It’s okay,” she told him, because it was, it really, really was. Jess had never been the sort of person to dwell on the past and her future seemed bright indeed. “So, I have a cousin? Cousins?” She hoped it was plural. Didn’t Lester have more than one kid? She thought Connor had said it was three.

Lester smiled at her. “You have cousins.”

Jess beamed, feeling as though an entire new world had opened up at her feet. Then, because she couldn’t resist, she said, “Shall we tell the others? If I start calling you Uncle James around the office, they’re sure to get the picture.”

And the look on his face made her laugh.

**_End_ **


End file.
